1. Technical Field
This document relates to image processing and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for generating a compressed file, and a terminal comprising the apparatus.
2. Related Art
With the recent rapid technological development in the field of digital signal processing, the field of applications to digital images is greatly expanding. Further, with the development of digital communication and the proliferation of multimedia applications, there is an increasing demand for digital image processing technology.
In particular, in video signals, image compression technology for efficient transmission or storage of digital images is a requisite because a large quantity of data has to be processed.
Typical examples of such image compression technology are Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) and Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). JPEG is the standard for image compression technology relating to a still image, and MPEG is the standard relating to moving image compression technology.
It has been known that JPEG (i.e., standard relating to still image compression technology) is chiefly suitable for electronic devices, requiring the display of high-picture quality and high resolution, because it has excellent data compression efficiency and can represent a variety of colors. JPEG is also advantageous in that the quality of an image and the size of the image file can be controlled when the image is created. Most of recent electronic devices adopt the JPEG standard as a method of compressing a still image because of the above advantages. According to a tendency requiring an image of a higher-picture quality and higher resolution, there is a need for a method capable of compressing a large quantity of image data at high speed with high efficiency.
It is recently a general tendency that a camera module with a high picture quality and high resolution of 100 million pixels or more is mounted on a variety of general electronic devices other than an image-capturing electronic device (e.g., a digital still camera) having image capturing as its main object. In particular, in mobile terminals such as a notebook computer and a portable phone, such functions as photographing or capturing and play of a moving image are ones of the supplementary functions that are widely used by a user. Accordingly, the camera module is being considered as a requisite component that should be mounted on the electronic devices.
However, in general, mobile devices and small-sized electronic devices, such as portable phones, have low data processing ability or low efficiency or both, and a slow processing speed as compared with image-capturing electronic devices, large-sized electronic devices, and fixed terminals. Nevertheless, conventional mobile devices and small-sized electronic devices are adopting an image compression method for the image-capturing electronic devices, the large-sized electronic devices, and the fixed terminals (i.e., image compression processing based on a host system within a device) (refer to FIG. 2)). In this case, there are problems that compression efficiency and the speed are lowered and data processing load is increased. Accordingly, there is an urgent need for a method and technology for generating a compressed file, which can be specialized for mobile devices and small-sized electronic devices.